Girly Bits Jini Goes Indie!

I'm not usually a huge fan of multicoloured glitterbombs, but I couldn't resist trying out the matte cheerfulness of Girly Bits Jini Goes Indie! I tried to tone it down a bit by using Hello Darling Sage Advice (dark olive) and Essie Da Bush (light olive) for the base.

Verdict? I like it! I wouldn't say I *love* it - the irregular glitters didn't like lying down flat on my nails, and a lot of top coat was required to flatten it out. But it's gone in my "use again soon" drawer.

Shades of Phoenix We're All Mad Here

Here's a polish I knew I had to buy the moment I saw it - Shades of Phoenix's We're All Mad Here, inspired by the colours of the Cheshire Cat from the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland.

I've always loved Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are such timeless books. I've been re-reading them since I was about 7. They never get old.

This polish is not quite opaque enough for me to wear on its own - I've layered 2 coats of this over ulta3 Flirty Bikini. I really like the contrast between the orange/yellow hexes, and the subtlety of the furry little purple bars!

Gold leaf nail art over Mckfresh Angel

Mckfresh Nail Attire is one of my favourite Aussie indie brands, made by a pretty damn cool chick. The Sunnydale collection was one of my favourites last year, and Angel in particular was one of most unique. It's a blackened purple base, with tiny silver specks and big blue iridescent bars, which are super thin and don't have any of the won't-lay-flat, looks-like-hair crappiness of many bar glitters. You can check out the swatch of Angel alone in my original post on the Buffy collection, but today I wanted to show you an experiment with gold leaf from Born Pretty.

I don't actually own a gold leaf topper yet, so I tried to make do with some shredded gold foil from Born Pretty. I used larger pieces in a mani for Artsy Wednesday a while ago, and it turns out that using smaller pieces is both better AND worse. Better, because you can pulverise the crap out of the foil. Worse, because it's super fiddly to apply. I used a cotton bud, much like the way I do glitter gradients, but since the foil is dry, I painted a slow-drying top coat over the original manicure first, to give it something to stick to.

Overall? I like the effect, but it seems like it would be so much faster just to cave and get a gold leaf top coat! I'm also considering dropping some of the foil into polish and seeing how stable it is - I've seen some nasty concoctions made from not-real-gold foil corroding in organic solvents though. We'll see!

Tony Moly Shooting Star

Here's one I love but haven't posted - Tony Moly Shooting Star. It's one of their Revlon Whimsical-looking line - a purple creme base with rainbow glitters. I used this combo in one of my first jelly sandwich manicures, so it was nice to finally pick it up in one-pot form from the Tony Moly stall in Sydney's Market City.

I love the pastel prettiness, and the cheerful multicoloured glitter! I think I'd prefer a slightly bluer purple though.

I've been really impressed with all the Korean polishes I have so far, which makes me think I should really buy more - they're affordable, and have lovely formulas!

Lab Muffin's Top 13 Polishes of 2013 Part 2: Indies

A few days ago I posted my favourite mainstream and boutique polishes that I discovered last year. I'm back now with my favourite indies! The indie market grew exponentially in 2013, especially in Australia. In 2012, I'd only heard of about 4 Aussie indie brands - now, according to the Lacquerheads of Oz Indie Directory there are almost 30! So it's no surprise that the indies crowded the mainstream polishes out of my top 13, and I had to split hairs and move the boutique polishes to the mainstream section because it looked too lonely.

Now, I realise most of the Polish or Perish audience aren't Australian, and you therefore thought your wallet would be safe - think again! International stockists now have a metric shitton of Australian indie brands (I know, I've seen photos of some of the makers' shipments). For specifics of where to get what you can look at the Lacquerheads of Oz Indie Directory, but some of the stockists that ship overseas and have a few brands include Femme Fatale Cosmetics, Color4Nails, Harlow & Co, Norway Nails, Llarowe, Mei Mei's Signatures and Ninja Polish.


So here are my top 8 indies of 2013...

Gloss 'n Sparkle The Huntress is a new find of mine - I've always been a sucker for deep, complex jellies, and this is in one of my favourite polish colours, green. It's also included in my 2nd anniversary giveaway.

Alanna Renee Reptar is an incredibly cool, unique shade. I love these out-of-left-field shades - they're so satisfyingly interesting even without nail art.

Celestial Highgarden was my favourite from the Game of Thrones-themed collaboration between Color4Nails and Celestial. I love a special effects shade, and this has both holo and thermal colour change effects! This shade inspired me to write this sciencey article on how thermochromic colour change pigments work.

Brown and green is such a pretty colour combination in my books, but so few polishes contain this colour combination. Sayuri Mori has this rare foresty look, and is lovely over a golden base.

Arcane Lacquer Erudite Dreams is a pretty blurple creme with pinkish gold shimmer. I really love Arcane's elegant but pretty polishes - very work-safe and wearable for all occasions, without being plain.

Powder Perfect Decorate a Palm Tree is a very shimmery dense microglitter in a fetching shade of grass green. I especially love how the green jelly base means that the glitter in the lower layers are a deeper colour.

I posted Loki's Lacquer Omicron Persei 8 here in April, but it deserves revisiting! It's the most amazingly unexpected smorgasbord of sparkles, and jaw-droppingly stunning in the sun.

This one's a bit of a copout - I'm nominating the entire Mckfresh Sunnydale Collection as my #13! The Buffy-inspired vampy collection just looks so good together. But if I had to pick one polish, it would probably be Xander (top right hand corner) - the blue-green duochrome is so pretty, even though Xander is a bloody irritating character.

There you have it - the best indies I tried this year! I'm sure there are some glaring omissions I'll kick myself for a bit later, but I've agonised over this list long enough that I really just needed to hit the "post" button and walk the hell away. 

I realise that this list is ridiculously biased towards Australian indies, and that's simply because I had enough to try within Australia that I didn't feel the need to pay premium shipping prices for overseas polishes! I will endeavour to try out more overseas brands in 2014, but to be honest, given how the Australian indie market is growing, I think I already have my nails full.

Lab Muffin's Top 13 Polishes of 2013 Part 1: Mainstream and Boutique Brands

2013 was a big year of swatching for me, and it was the year where I think Australian indie polishes really blossomed. It was very difficult to pick just 13 polishes that I loved, but I certainly tried! I limited myself to one polish per brand only, and to polishes that I discovered in 2013 (though they weren't necessarily released last year). Here we go, with the mainstream and boutique (i.e. small company but not hand-mixed) picks...

First, I obviously have to mention my collaboration shade, piCture pOlish Ultra Violence. The literary amongst you will know that the name is inspired by Anthony Burgess's book A Clockwork Orange. I love the holo iridescent glitter against the rich purple! I've included a bottle of Ultra Violence in my 2nd blogiversary giveaway here.

I blogged about the stunningly pretty Pretty Serious BSOD here earlier. What happened next was that while wearing it, my laptop did actually have a heart-stopping BSOD moment, in the middle of thesis-writing! Luckily I didn't lose anything, but Kaz was too sweet, and in her usual above-and-beyond customer service style, she sent me a few polishes to dull the pain.

OPI Keeping Suzi At Bay is a gorgeous blue creme that is both interesting and elegant. It may be my favourite creme shade ever. I think dark blue is actually quite work safe, but definitely not boring.

ulta3 Triple Threat was a big surprise for me. This is a complex holo glitter jelly that's indie-worthy, but comes at the ridiculously budget-friendly price of $2.

Orly Digital Glitter is one of my top 5 Orly polishes, ever. I usually think of Orly as a brand which does salon-friendly classic polishes well, but whenever they come out with something a bit different it's usually ridiculously cool (Fowl Play! Space Cadet!). I love the unlikely brown/purple/red combination - it's a bit steampunk in my opinion, and makes me think of Neal Stephenson novels. To top it off, the purple shimmer is duochrome.

I will be back soon with some of my indie picks of 2013 - hold onto your wallets!

Beach nail art and a sunscreen PSA

Sorry for the unexpected absence! I don't really have any excuse apart from laziness unfortunately. So all I have is a beach themed mani, with Maybelline Seaquins.

If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, don't forget to put on the sunscreen this summer - here's a handy infographic on how much to use and when:

Silver glitter gradient over nude nails

Sorry for the absence! Hope I can make up for it with this, one of the prettiest manis I've worn in ages, and a contender for favourite bridal design:

It's a gradient of Maybelline Color Show Silver Gleam over OPI Malaysian Mist, which I did using my cotton bud glitter gradient method - it's so much easier and more precise than sponging for me! It was hard to get a gradient up the nail with such a dense glitter, so I literally dotted polish with the tip of the bud up my nail, like a big woolly dotting tool.

I wore this to Spa and Beauty Expo, and it lasted me almost a week - the glitter tips are great at keeping tipwear at bay!

Alanna Renee It's a Boy!

Alanna Renee, an Aussie indie brand, recently released a collection called Bundle of Joy. I swatched a couple of the collection right before the release date, but after the release, I had to buy one more - It's a Boy! This is a pale blue creme with no yellow tones at all. In the bottle there are little glass flecks, but on the nail they pretty much disappear, but the creme is left looking a lot shinier than usual. Sneaky!

I ended up using this as a base for my Totoro nail art for Artsy Wednesday - it's a perfect complement to the brown tones. I was inordinately proud of that mani!

In case you didn't know, Alanna Renee is made by Alanna of Pretty Purple Polish, one of my first blogging buddies. Naturally you can buy her polish in Australia via her site, but Color4Nails and Shoppe Eclecticco offer international shipping.

BYS Glitter Blue and final thesis hand-in, hurray!

Sorry I've been a bit slack here! I've been posting so many nail things on my own blog that Polish or Perish has been quite neglected, not to mention that I've recently handed in my final, hard-bound emended thesis, so I'll hopefully be in the November graduation round and I'll be Dr Muffin. Hurrah!

So now I get to enter the existential crevasse that is post-doctoral career crisis. I know what I don't want to do, but I have no idea what I actually want to do.. at least my nails are pretty!

Here's BYS Glitter Blue, a pretty silver glitter in a pale blue base that's more refined and elegant than anything else I've seen from BYS. I received it from a lovely fellow Aussie nail addict in a Christmas in July swap. It's sheer, so I layered it over Duri Summer in the City.

I was expecting it to be a thermal polish (the blue sticker on the lid usually indicates that a BYS is a colour change polish) but unfortunately I think they just made a mistake. Boo! It's still very pretty though.

Rainbow gradient

I love gradients - they're easy and impressive, even if clean-up (and the resulting angry dry skin) is a bit of a pain. Here's one I did recently using some Bio Sculpture polishes, which I wore to a meetup with some Sydney nail fanatics:

And here's what it looks like after I covered it with permanent marker, using PVA to stop the marker from streaking (see the tutorial I did here)

I wish I'd thought of it sooner! I'm also quite surprised by how much darker it looks after the markering - I mean, it should be pretty damn obvious since I'm covering 60% of the nail in black, but the contrast between the original and the final is pretty striking to me. Silly irrational human brain!

(You may have noticed that I used the same colours as I did for this gradient Movember mani, because I am clearly somewhat lacking in imagination and if the colours are from the same collection, that's my gradient choices done. But seriously, that Bio Sculpture collection has the prettiest matching gelato colours. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2013

By now you've probably seen all the nail art tutorials flooding the internet for piCture pOlish's annual Blog Fest, which this year included over 130 bloggers, including me! Here's the mani I did, using the shades Hope, Dorothy and Ruby Blou:

Hop on over to my blog to see the full tutorial - it's pretty basic nail art, but I loved this mani!

Pretty Serious Naughty Night Shift Nurse

You may have heard that Aussie indie brand Pretty Serious recently released a limited edition polish, Naughty Night Shift Nurse, that sold out in 10 minutes. Luckily, my friend and fellow blogger Rose (Every Little Polish) ninjaed me one, and I arrived just in time for my birthday! I used it as the base for my birthday nail art (click to see the DIY nail decal tutorial I made).

Here it is in its full glory, over multichrome-boosting black:

It's a stunning purple-to-red multichrome with red-green multichrome flakies thrown in (I believe they're the same ones as those in Essie Shine of the Times, Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, Nubar 2010 et al.).

Naughty Night Shift Nurse was originally a custom created for Aussie nail blogger Kristy (The Polish Haven) who, you guessed it, is a nurse. She was generous enough to share her creation with us, but unfortunately due to ingredient supply issues, NNSN is a limited edition. There will be a second batch released later this year, along with Emma Louise, another PS limited edition.
Here's my birthday mani:

The DIY nail decal technique I used is now my favourite nail art trick - it lets you split up your nail painting into multiple sessions, which is great if you're time-poor or a bit ADD!

Nail art: Inspired by, um, underwear.

Recently an Australian underwear company released a range of patterned cotton undies, and were offering undies as prizes for a nail art contest. I'm a fan of freehand nail art, and they just happened to be my favourite brand of everyday underwear, so yep, here are my nails:

And yes, I won two pairs of undies. If you are the makers of very comfortable underwear, I am interested in whoring out space on my nails for your advertising purposes! Please contact me. I am size small.

Liquid Sand dotticure

I'm not a massive fan of creme liquid sands - they look kind of lumpy and plastic to me (unlike the shimmers, which I generally love to death). So I've decided to try using them for nail art... and surprisingly, I really like the result. Win!

The base is OPI Keeping Suzi at Bay, a deep dark blue - it's my favourite out of all the cremes from the upcoming San Francisco collection (click for my original swatches). I dotted over it with OPI Wharf! Wharf! Wharf! which is slightly darker. I didn't really enjoy wearing it as a full mani (see the liquid sand swatches here), but this was completely different.

I'm looking forward to trying out a similar thing with OPI It's All San Andreas's Fault, the other creme liquid sand from the collection, in the hopes that it'll also grow on me.

What do you think of creme liquid sands? Yay or nay? Fad or innovation?

OPI Polka.com black jelly sandwich

I recently scored Camouflage Colour Black in a Lust Have It! sample box - at first I was disappointed, since it's just a plain black, but then I swatched it and discovered that it was extremely sheer. Hurray! Jelly sandwich!

I started with a couple of layers of Black, then dabbed OPI Polka.com, a pink/blue/purple glitter (see my original swatches of it here), and finished with an extra layer of Black.

The result reminded me of some of the indies in jelly bases floating around - I'm in love! It's made me want to collect jellies in all the colours (so 2012, I know).

Copper oxide and copper metal: Butter London Two Fingered Salute and Face of Australia Studio 54

I've been really obsessed with work safe polishes since finally scoring a temporary teaching job, my first income since my scholarship ran out. I recently scored my second ever Butter London polish in a Sydney nail meetup from the lovely Rebecca - it's Two Fingered Salute, a dusty pastel green with copper microglitter, which I think is work safe from a distance. The microglitter just happened to match the newly released glitter Face of Australia Studio 54, so naturally the two had to pose together in a mani.

I loved this combination - Two Fingered Salute is such a pretty, elegant colour. It just so happens that the green is the colour of oxidised copper (think Statue of Liberty) and the copper is, well, copper, which made my (not very) inner nerd quite happy!

I would love to have more Butter Londons, but my wallet just won't let me yet! What are your favourite work safe colours?

OPI Black Spotted franken fail

When OPI Black Spotted was all the rage, I tried to make a version using easily accessible supplies (for my guess at the science behind Black Spotted, check out my post here). Unfortunately, it turned out that none of the things I tried were close enough to heptane to work, and instead I got a kind of cool-looking dirty, grungey effect, which I layered over some neons for fun. While it's kind of cool, I don't see myself wearing this again!

Purple Use-Up-the-Polish mani number 2

Here's my second mani to try to get through a few untrieds - China Glaze Marry a Millionaire and Nubar Peacock Feathers. I didn't think I wanted Marry a Millionaire based on swatches I saw online, but when I went to the mythical Pro Nail Supply in Sydney and saw it glowing in the corner, I had to have it! The green bits of bar glitter look stunning against the grey tinged purple (grurple?).

Peacock Feathers was a lemming of mine, and while it's not the most stunning multichrome, I love all the colours it contains.

I'm not sure if these shades really work together - they're both not really on the same spectrum of purple. But it was a very visually interesting mani to wear!